Precarious
by balita
Summary: They just loved to peer over the other's edges, test the boundaries, fumble into infinity, into precarious. SxF songfic


**A/N:** This tiny songfic came out of my weekend Cowboy Bebop binge. That and I've wanted to use this song (Spark by Tori Amos) for the longest while in a fic. Damn I love that woman. Also, don't ask why some of the song lyrics are spaced out while others aren't, blame FF and its bad formatting.

**Dutiful Disclaimer:** I do not own Cowboy Bebop, or the song...or at least the rights to them, and the only thing you'll get from me is my red Sharpie, because I like my metallic ones way too much to ever part with, and I am money-less. Enjoy!

**Precarious**

_She's addicted to nicotine patches.  
She's addicted to nicotine patches.  
She's afraid of the light in the dark.  
6:58 are you sure where my spark is?  
Here... Here... Here..._

He was like that you know, exactly like that silly habit she could never kick, even when she finds herself spinning in reverse. Arm dangling over the edge of the ugly swallow coloured couch, fingers precariously hanging onto the shriveled butt—_precarious_, finding the scraggly bits she called her edges, and always doing his illusionists cakewalk along them, _testing_, _probing_, but never really _interested_—with the lingering locks of smoke curling on themselves then easing away into the oxygen-carbon-dioxide mix. She was loitering in his body worn space waiting, daring him to solidify in the doorway demanding for her to move; sometimes she had wondered if his name was scribbled on a the bottom of a cushion so that when he decided to fight her for it (it was bound to happen) he could lift it up and stake claim to this sofa. He never did what was expected of him—_precarious darling_—couldn't paint glistening cobalt lacquer around his character (he was just so blue) and colour him predictable, or traditional, or dull. If he was, and there always room for wishful thinking, then he would have hobbled in, splayed open and utterly ready for her worry and snide words. Remedies from one unconventional medicine woman who sang off-tune then washed him with wit and cleansed with a bit of petty cruelty. But he was oh-so-precarious, could never do what he was told.

And so was she.

Maybe that's why, together, they weren't containable. There were just too many edges, too many jutting places that overhung the type of infinity they were looking for. She'd do cartwheels and pretend to slip into all the places he didn't want her to go; he'd let his feet dangle off her borders then give her his half grin as he'd slither down low. They played with each other's meaning of forbidden, after all they never truly knew its definition.

Obsession? Oh no, no, no, simply an addiction. She licks her fingers to terminate the smoldering bits of ash that was the remainder of her cigarette, terminates it then _flick click burn_ lights another. She's wondering, the bladed remains of something that she can't classify—not yet give it another day, _give it time_ (a sacrifice she'd rather not make)—tumbling nosily, severing those dizzying impressions of him seeing if they can will her into finding someone who will be his antithesis, will be _typical_. She's too caught up in their vertigo. They weren't made up of the same things he and Julia were, she didn't have that (fallen angels and diaphanous reality), didn't know how to be anything but messy, troublesome, a pain-in-the-ass and combustible. Just another sweet-talkin', gun-tottin', vixen, who would have loved to shred herself apart so she could find all the missing spectrums of herself, but she was too busy being a constant lover. Anybody's but his.

_She's convinced she could hold back the glacier  
_(_between cotton balls and xylophones_)_  
But she couldn't keep Baby alive_(_I_'_m getting old_)_  
Doubting if there's a woman in there somewhere  
Here... Here... Here..._

_Whfff_, she leaks the vapors from sanguine hued lips the blue lined smoke veiling the new shadowy silence that clung to ships insides. Or at least it attempted to. But it melted away, much like she was doing, like she had done when she had pointed her gun and asked questions she already knew the answers to. Proximity with him had always been a problem, she had to count to forever and concentrate on breathing, focus on the icy mess brewing inside her, warming up. She'd clamp her lips, try not to shudder, then stare him _away_, verdure orbs shoving his presence a few feet—feet perilously gripping the crags, trying to see her bottom, with that half-a-smile-half-a-frown—enough to quell the I-think-I-could-fall-in-love-with-you's, the slight nibbling of his lips, or her painful right-hook. _Innie_,_ mini_,_ miney_,_ moe_, she usually opted for the latter, except that one time when she couldn't shoot him in the gut as she should have (lesson number 621 in how to save _his_ life), couldn't think of anything insidious, and definitely couldn't kiss the bastard. Just trapped. Eyes swerving, contemplating, what to do, what to do, because he wasn't supposed to come behind pushing her off, letting her see the hideously enchanting base of his own pit. She wished she had shot him. If she had then he would have sat his ass down and healed before he finished his date with Vicious. Jet would have been able to fix her ship and _she_ could have saved _him_, because they both needed a good dose of role reversal.

Yet she let him leave. Let him leave so he wouldn't have the affirmation that the girl she tucked beneath that Poker Alice get-up, the girl on that video-tape supposedly discarded, rather lost in fragmented moments of memory, had resurfaced finding herself weirdly attached to him. Oddly attracted. He left her with something addictively distasteful and cloying coating the insides of her mouth, no amount of spicy cigarettes and Bloody Mary's could rinse away. In one moment he was rich and heady and dangerous, she was stupid and maybe not in love but captivated nonetheless so she did the only thing she knew how: she lapped him up, letting him peer into her precipice. It was all just messy business.

Perhaps she'd never be a woman again, just that simple girl he had turned her into.

_You say you don't want it again and again  
But you don't, don't really mean it  
You say you don't want it, this circus we're in  
But you don't, don't really mean it  
You don't, don't really mean it..._

And it's times like these, creeping instances that pounce on her, mid cigarette drag, mid breath, when she realizes her weakness, that she thinks she never really wanted him. Never wanted his unpredictable yet nonchalant nature, never wanted his rage directed at her—flying objects and cruel remarks—certainly didn't want their chemistry. Opposites attract, so they, with their whirling explosive similarity, could never be what she yearned for. He just scratched that itch she had been feeling ever since she had took up permanent residence on the _Bebop_, twinging ticklish pain that she couldn't soothe despite the feverishly wanton needs she happened to satiate, while sober of course. He was that thing she never opened up because she didn't want to, it would have been so easy, so simple to give in, but she was only pretending, playing master chemist with heart strings and those curious things that tend to bring people together. She could throw it away whenever she liked to.

Now…she well now she could fuck time too, instead of busying herself arguing with him, could fly out and sex the men that never did beat him at pool, not once having to look over her shoulder trying to glimpse his slouching frame at the bar while she snuck some poor schmuck (barely as charismatic as he was) through tendrils of smoky fingers, between the golden puddles of pool table lights, out of whiskey stained flooring and alcohol air.

Then there was Gren. This was memories back, when she finally had her head fastened correctly thinking a thought nothing short of genius. _Leave them before they leave you_, _because eventually they always do_. They, her comrades, would try to find their places, where they were supposed to be situated in society, try to find their own bits of reality, leaving her the girl who was shipped from another time to tag along for the ride. And guess where she was after listening to a man who was a dazed and bemused as she was? Following Jet, a man who probably knew the answer to what and where and how and a nuance of other questions one could ask about their significance in this thing called Fate. Or Destiny. Whatever. Gren so different, than _him_, so different than the numerous men she had bedded and forgotten; Gren was someone she should've fallen in love with. He was logical. And it was quite possible that she did, fall in love with him that is. For a fleeting wrinkle of time she laid herself bare without ever knowing why taking some unknown comfort in his presence that smoothed her turbulency, gentled the belly of her undercurrent, and made her placid. She enjoyed the feeling. That Mr. Saxophone had, with one lilting tune, blown her blues away. She was ready to hold his hand again; she was ready to hear his voice reassemble all the cast-away pieces of herself; she was _ready_ even when he told her about his lust for camaraderie. Ready and waiting for him to fall back in love with her, she was so prepared, too bad though 'cause she was handcuffed and tossed aside, Vicious too compelling to deny. Too magnetic.

_If the Divine master plan is perfection_  
(_swing low_)  
_Maybe next I'll give Judas a try_  
(_swing low sweet chariot_)  
_Trusting my soul to the ice-cream assassin  
Here... Here... Here..._

Similar, thinking on it now, incredibly similar those two with their dreams, demons, and splintered perceptions, him and Vicious that is. Perhaps Vicious was the better of the two, bitterly caustic, _frigid_, yeah, she could have got caught in his devilish net too. She would have let him snap off her fairy wings and staple her to the wall, because that is—_was_ probably more pleasant than being enclosed in a bell jar yearning after release. Rewind. _Reverse_. He had everyone enraptured, and Vicious was no exception, because Vicious wanted to open him up take a glimpse at the compelling creature—so parallel to what he was, and Vicious' narcissism was the nature of this fixation—he sealed with bandages and devil from paradise-kisses. Nothing she could give him. Only Julia with her treacherously ordinary beauty, creamy and perfect, Julia who didn't need to learn how to slide herself back together, Julia who didn't need to wait for her chrysalis to become a _real woman_.

Vicious once loved Julia too.

But betrayal is such a fascinating little being isn't it? Spread its appendages into the shifting views of their little trio—Vicious and Julia and him tiny kaleidoscope glass bits spun to its liking, woven, pinpricked, snipped off and left to do nothing but remember. Seethe. Teem. Remember. Perfect process that she herself had stumbled into, with hesitant feet while she sucked on clove tasting cigarettes. They reminded her of him. Had thrusted them away, hidden them in the groves of the couch where the cushions came together, till she was needing them. Needing him, as always.

Left her, he did, nonetheless with stretching bruises, dissatisfaction oozing amidst gooseflesh and the raising of fine hairs nearly invisible. He separated himself from their sticky, viscous, erratic comradeship—that thing that wasn't really friendship, wasn't necessarily anything at all, but he'd still wait for her to wake up cigarette between his lips, smoking gun tucked into its holster. She'd still feel the clenching rollercoaster twist of her intestines when he resembled pale face of Death begrudgingly revived. She was waiting for the bits of him that had infested itself beneath delicate skin and _coloured her_ indigo, periwinkle, battered midnight—the complete assortment of oh-so-blue, to remove themselves so that she could go back to being a woman with attitude. So she could go back to being that thing he hated. He'd stolen it somewhere between their first blackjack game and that chilling synthetic eye.

They'd never been close enough for her to see it. Dangerous to be so close, precarious. Teetering on eggshells and tightropes and rubber bands pulled tight when they lit each others tobacco sticks off the other, when the flickering glow of a Zippo in the opposites hand hovered in front of their face. Tension as tangible as the bounties that they had failed to capture, as substantial as the woolongs that made its slippery unseen descent to nothing. Couldn't do anything about it if you asked them, couldn't do anything about the bubbling hatred which masked a whole lot else, not like they wanted to really, not like they ever wanted to. Not until the very end.

_How many fates turn around in the overtime_

_Ballerinas that have fins that you_'_ll never find_

_You thought that you were the bomb_

_Yes well so did I_

_Say you don_'_t want it_…

_Say you don_'_t want it_…

Perhaps he wanted to as well. This…this was the fucking problem, the not knowing. In that instant she wanted to know, _wanted_, _wanted_, _wanted_, and he gave it her. Stripped her naked, ripped her raw, and it was the fact that he left her _unfinished_. Dipped inside and pulled out too quickly, not quickly enough, leaving her a clenching, convulsing mess that had been scraped across the edges of Paradise (_dream a dream darling_, _perhaps he_'_ll see you in reality_) and never let in. He left her wanton and needy and lust-filled. She was just a teenager and he was her first time, captured the virginity and never took her all the way. She wished that he was still bloody alive—she giggles at that a little, how ironic, _bloody alive_—so that she could fumble into her orgasm. She wanted to give him his own. She wanted to bask in their afterglow.

She tenses suddenly, calf in a muscle spasm that has her toes clenching, the tiny feet of pinpricks (cold ticklish burning) crawling up bone and causing her to suck in a little harder, swallow a little more nicotine. He left her stirring, in a permanent state of defrost that was irreversible but she couldn't move any farther. The only thing he didn't steal was her ability to move, physically that is. It chased after him of course—she didn't know how to be anything but folded, ground, _crumpled_ for an infinitesimal moment (four days, nine hours, fifty-six seconds) but she figured there was no use crying over someone that had bounded into death so whole-heartedly and never looked back, not once, at you. So now, she brooded.

Brood—

Smile like you fucking mean it.

Conduct her metamorphosis.

Search for winking starlight.

—Deny.

Deny he ever meant anything at all, besides being a dear ol' friend she's likely to forget sooner or later. Deny that infatuation wasn't molting to become something more—_velvety_ _thirst_. Deny, _deny_, **_deny_**. But all this renouncing of feeling has left something unsettling and singeing amidst stomach acid, Jack Daniels, and tobacco. A scream, nice and thick and heavy, curling and ready, waiting patiently to be detonated into reality, waiting for a release.

_Say you don_'_t want it_…

_Say you don_'_t want it again and again_

_But you don_'_t_,_ don_'_t really mean it_

_Say you don_'_t want it this circus we_'_re in_

_But you don_'_t_,_ don_'_t really mean it_

_You don_'_t_,_ don_'_t really mean it_…

This thing, this being splits out of her through the gossamer vines that extend all the way out of her mouth, nicotine and arsenic scream. It's breathless, only making tiny vibrations in the air around her—silent ripples that somehow connects him to her, her to him—inaudible and unbelievably loud. Screeches across the (small) parts of her she found hopelessly fastened to him, that silly lost cause, wraiths and banshees and phantoms—all the things that she couldn't catch, all the things that are uncontained.

Dreams.

Illusions.

Past, present, and he told her once, that she had a future and that's all that mattered.

He told her a lot of acrid nothings.

_She's addicted to nicotine patches  
She's afraid of the light in the dark  
6:58 are you sure where my spark is?  
Here... Here... Here..._

His phosphorescent after-image is the only thing that lingers in this couch filled with ashes and his clove tobacco scent. He left her stumbling along the edges of _precarious_.

* * *

Thanks for reading, oh and a review would be nice. Tootles! 


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